“... images of ruin have come equally well from other origins (Great War, civil war, revolution) and may this not be more relevant, since the broken bridge and the cleft hill don’t belong at all to what was done to the crofting townships by the lairds’ thugs, nor do tiles, glass or china, none of which were in use there? But usually Marshall is relevant and ...”

“... from the order of the contexts in which they appear, and which their appearance disrupts and may eventually alter’. (Which perhaps, in language as little figurative as possible, is simply to give the imagination its ‘amoral’ freedom, and then remind it of its ultimate moral obligation, its duty to reality.) At all events, to speak of the ...”

“... said, but one of the merits of this book is that the writer clearly points the way to anyone who may feel like such an undertaking. One of the reasons Bridges has been neglected is probably the prevalent though quite inaccurate idea that his life was serene and sheltered; readers do not like that sort of thing. Certainly he was wealthy, happily ...”

“... the Ark. God’s great eugenic plan does not include them, but they are also excluded – and, it may be, destroyed – by a failure of imagination. It would be wrong to reduce the otherness of Maxwell’s poems by turning them too much into allegories, political or spiritual. His poetry outruns conclusive interpretation; for all its intertextual ...”

“... itself it is, well, itselves, a sort of shimmering incorrigible monolith of fixed attitudes that may or may not be shifting slightly. (‘Protestants Cannot be Forced Into A United Ireland – Sinn Fein,’ reads a headline on page four of the Irish Times. Maybe in the talks, maybe there’ll be some federal arrangement? I ...”

“... friend, the economist Graham Hutton. The fact that the early Statesman had no fixed party abode may have helped its fortunes at least as much as it harmed them. At the start, the Webbs, Shaw, Sharp and most contributors held firmly to the view that the Parliamentary Labour Party had little to offer their kind of political rationalism, being composed largely ...”

“... though that is a factor. From their first day in the classroom, however gifted or dedicated they may be, at the back of their minds our teachers know that a million of the richest, most influential and frequently most educationally discerning parents in the country will go to any lengths not to send their children to the schools where they teach. They will ...”

“... to ‘the insouciant calm under pressure that eight hundred years of history gave a 14th earl’ may suggest an unduly deferential image of Alec Douglas-Home – the name to which he was born and to which he reverted between 1963 and 1974, before retiring from politics as Lord Home of the Hirsel. It was under the courtesy title of Lord Dunglass that he first ...”

“... recognised. At their peak in the 1650s his almanacs sold up to 30,000 copies a year. From them he may only have netted a modest £70 a year (enough for a gentleman to live on), but they served to advertise his astrological practice, from which we have the surviving records of many thousands of consultations. Lilly advised the rich, famous and powerful; among ...”

“... finally, on page 128, they had a daughter, Katharine Houghton Hepburn. Kate junior was born on 12 May 1907. She had an energetic childhood, was encouraged by her father to be sporty and by her mother to be outspoken. She climbed trees and shoved balloons saying ‘Votes for Women’ into the hands of strangers. In the spring of 1915, Charlie, Tom’s eldest ...”

“... than might be expected: the Party has not been wholly captured by the Right. In years to come it may not matter who captures it. The most important finding of the book is that the Conservative Party in the constituencies is withering away. Constituency parties steadfastly refuse to disclose their membership figures to Central Office, and exact statistics are ...”

“... slightly disdainful Londoners. Nothing is analysed in these terms. Fluctuations of personal wealth may result in sacrifice; beautiful houses or school fees can be jeopardised. But the characters’ assumptions, their vocabulary and ways of speaking don’t change. Their society is a backdrop for the exploration of relationships, but it is also a trap, an ...”

“... the Shakespeare corpus in the half-century during which its volumes were published. Arden 3, one may be sure, will be pushed along at a much faster clip, driven by the economic imperative for prompt return on Routledge’s investment. OUP’s patience with the OED must have been handsomely rewarded – in the very long run. The 125 ‘fascicles’ stanched ...”

“... Spanish Crown. Thus Ayacucho can be considered the birthplace of the modern Peruvian state, and may yet prove to be its burial site. The revolution’s ferocity has given the Corner of the Dead a new and chilling resonance. Journalists, at first mystified by the theatricality and macabre ritual of Sendero’s violence, groped for clichés, something to help ...”

“... a sleazeball. Her peppering of the subsequent conversation with literary and artistic references may, I suppose, be a ploy to deter his advances: more likely, it’s the author’s way of smuggling in the allusive baggage which she feels (mistakenly) will give the novel resonance. These awkwardly colloquial manoeuvrings (‘You ever read the Russian ...”